Systems and methods for door error detection

ABSTRACT

Systems and methods for monitoring an operation of a door of a public transportation vehicle are disclosed. In an embodiment, the system includes an optical sensor unit and a control unit. The optical sensor is arranged at a distance from the door and configured to record a movement of the door during an opening and/or a closing. The control unit is configured to (1) determine a position of a reference point of the door based on the recorded movement of the door, (2) determine a parameter of the movement of the door during the movement based on the determined position of the reference point, (3) determine a deviation of the parameter of the movement from a predetermined/allowed range of values of the parameter, and (4) determine an error in the operation of the door based on the determined deviation.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority to Swedish application number1950417-4, filed on Apr. 4, 2019, the disclosure of which isincorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

FIELD OF THE DISCLOSURE

The disclosure relates generally to monitoring operations of doors of avehicle. More specifically, the disclosure relates to systems andmethods for monitoring operation of doors of a public transportationvehicle.

BACKGROUND

Vehicles for public transportation, such as trains, buses, trams, etcetera, rely on efficient and trouble-free operation of the vehicledoors. Door failures and mechanical problems with opening and closingare regarded as serious safety issues since they may lead to passengerinjuries and potential deaths, especially when vehicle doors openprematurely or close too hard in an uncontrolled manner. Additionally,malfunctioning doors lead to delays, cancelations, customerdissatisfaction, and eventually loss of productivity and revenue. When adoor error occurs, the vehicle often needs to be taken out of serviceimmediately and taken into repair service.

Many mechanical errors can be automatically detected and identifiedbefore becoming serious via appropriate sensing and alarm systems. Forexample, it is known to monitor the current of an electrical motoroperating the doors during the door movement when motor-driven dooractuators are used. Deviation from norm values may by determined by thesensor detecting abnormally high or low mechanical resistanceexperienced by the motor. Such abnormal resistance may then beidentified as an error and may be used to trigger an alarm signal. Inanother example of pneumatically controlled doors, it is known to usepressure sensors allowing similar analysis of the door operation.However, all the above techniques have the drawback of requiringinstallation of dedicated sensor hardware, signal processing, and dataanalysis units. Cost of installing such solutions may be very high,especially to retrofit configurations of existing vehicles.

Therefore, there is a need for improvements in this field, inparticular, for a system that is reliable and yet cost-effective toproduce, install, and operate. There is also a need for early detectionof emerging errors, in order to detect errors before they become tooserious, which enables repair of the doors at regular and plannedservicing of the vehicle.

SUMMARY

The following presents a simplified summary of the invention in order toprovide a basic understanding of some aspects of the invention. Thissummary is not an extensive overview of the invention. It is notintended to identify critical elements or to delineate the scope of theinvention. Its sole purpose is to present some concepts of the inventionin a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description thatis presented elsewhere.

In some embodiments, the disclosure provides a system for monitoring anoperation of a door of a public transportation vehicle. The systemincludes a video camera and a controller. The video camera is arrangedat a distance from the door and is configured to record a movement ofthe door during opening and closing functions. The controller isarranged to receive video data from the video camera and to (1)determine a position of a reference point of the door in the video data,(2) determine a parameter of the movement of the door as a function overtime during the opening or the closing from the video data as based onthe position of the reference point, and (3) determine whether themovement of the door is normal or anomalous based on the parameter.

Optionally, the video camera is a surveillance camera connected to asurveillance system of the public transportation vehicle.

Optionally, the video camera is a closed-circuit television (CCTV)camera.

Optionally, the reference point of the door is selected from the groupconsisting of a mark and a recognizable geometrical feature.

Optionally, the reference point is determined by a Canny edge detectionalgorithm.

Optionally, determining whether the movement of the door is normal oranomalous includes a step of determining whether the parameter fallswithin or outside a predetermined allowed range of parameter values.

Optionally, the parameter is a position function of the reference pointas a function over time.

Optionally, the parameter is a velocity function of the reference pointas a function over time.

Optionally, the parameter is an acceleration function of the referencepoint as a function over time.

Optionally, determining whether the movement of the door is normal oranomalous includes a step of determining whether the parameter deviatesfrom previously recorded and stored data of the same parameter andrelated to the same door.

Optionally, determining whether the movement of the door is normal oranomalous includes a step of determining whether the parameter as afunction over time deviates from normal operations of similar doorsbased on an artificial intelligence algorithm with access to a databaseof recordings of the same parameter as a function over time for aplurality of previously recorded doors.

Optionally, the controller is configured to generate an alarm signalupon determining that the movement of the door is anomalous.

Optionally, the controller is partially or fully arranged in a controlunit of the public transportation vehicle.

Optionally, the control unit is configured to determine a time windowduring which a door movement is expected. The control unit is furtherconfigured to determine that the movement of the door is anomalous if itis not initiated during the time window.

Optionally, the public transportation vehicle further includes a centralcontrol unit and a communication unit. The controller is partially orfully arranged in a central control unit. The central control unit isarranged externally from the public transportation vehicle. Thecommunication unit is configured to wirelessly communicate with thecentral control unit.

In other embodiments, the disclosure provides a method for monitoring anoperation of a door of a public transportation vehicle. The methodincludes the following steps: (1) recording video data of a movement ofthe door during an opening or a closing; (2) determining a position of areference point of the door in the video data; (3) determining aparameter of the movement of the door as a function over time during theopening or the closing from the video data based on the position of thereference point; and (4) determining whether the movement of the door isnormal or anomalous based on the parameter.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Illustrative embodiments of the disclosure are described in detail belowwith reference to the figures.

FIG. 1 is a schematic illustration of a side view of an interior of avehicle cabin according to an embodiment of the disclosure.

FIG. 2A is a schematic illustration of a side view of a door of avehicle according to an embodiment of the disclosure.

FIG. 2B is a schematic illustration of a position curve of a door of avehicle according to an embodiment of the disclosure.

FIG. 3 is a schematic illustration of an external data center and aremote central controller according to an embodiment of the disclosure.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating an error determination processaccording to an embodiment of the disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The following describes some non-limiting embodiments of the inventionwith reference to the accompanying drawings. The described embodimentsare merely a part rather than all of the embodiments of the invention.All other embodiments obtained by a person of ordinary skill in the artbased on the embodiments of the disclosure shall fall within the scopeof the disclosure.

FIG. 1 is a schematic illustration of a side view of an interior of avehicle cabin according to an embodiment of the disclosure. Here, thevehicle cabin 1A may include at least one remotely controlled vehicledoor 1B, which may be located in any appropriate part of the vehiclecabin 1A. For example, the door 1B may be in the front, in the rear, orin the middle of the vehicle. Optionally, the vehicle may include aplurality of remotely controlled doors 1B. For example, two, three, ormore doors 1B. The doors 1B may be controlled remotely (e.g. by adriver) and may be moved pneumatically, hydraulically, mechanically, orelectrically. The door(s) 1B may include a single door blade coveringthe entire door opening or two door blades. In the latter case, eachdoor covers about a half of the door opening.

The vehicle cabin 1A may be a single cabin (or carriage) of a publictransportation vehicle for transporting passengers/goods or a part of aplurality of cabins belonging to the same vehicle. The publictransportation vehicle may be a vehicle suitable for transportation ofpassengers/goods such as a bus, a minibus, a tram, a train, atransportations van, et cetera.

The door 1B of the vehicle may be arranged with at least one door blade1B′. The door blade 1B′ may have freedom of movement in both horizontaland vertical directions. The door 1B may be arranged as a bi-foldingdoor, which may enable the panels of the door to fold up against thevehicle sidewall. Alternatively, the door 1B may be arranged as asliding door where door blades 1B′ may be mounted or suspended from atrack. The slide door 1B may open or close by sliding horizontallyalongside or into the vehicle sidewall. The slide door 1B may furtheropen or close by sliding vertically into the vehicle sidewall or thefloor of the vehicle. According to an embodiment, the door 1B may havetwo door blades 1B′ arranged to move in the opposite directions relativeto each other when opening or closing. In such embodiment, edges of thedoor blades 1B′ may be secured at a middle point 1B″ in the completelyclosed condition of the door 1B. The door blades 1B′ may be arranged tomove away from each other during opening of the door 1B or move towardseach other during closing of the door 1B.

At least one video camera 1C is arranged at a distance from the vehicledoors 1B, may be within the cabin 1A, and is directed so that it has agood line-of-sight towards the door 1B. The video camera 1C may be anycamera intended for video recording, but a surveillance camera of thevehicle may be particularly desirable. Surveillance cameras are alreadyprovided on many public transportation vehicles, and the disclosedsystems and methods of monitoring the doors may take advantage of theon-board surveillance system or CCTV cameras already installed insidethe cabins and carriages of the vehicles. As a result, the costefficiency of the door monitoring system may be significantly reducedsince the disclosure may alleviate the requirement of installingseparate door monitoring sensors. Further, the system may be installedat marginal costs and be easily adapted to the older models oftransportation vehicles not equipped with surveillance cameras as adefault system. Optionally, the video camera may be dedicated to thedoor monitoring when implemented as a stand-alone system.

The surveillance camera 1C installed in the cabin 1A of the vehicle maybe arranged to record a video feed of the doors 1B of the vehicle duringopening and/or closing. The surveillance camera unit 1C may connect to adata storage unit 1D.

The data storage unit 1D may be arranged to receive the video feed fromthe surveillance cameras 1C of the vehicle and store the videoinformation for further processing in the system. The data storage unit1D may connect to a control unit 1E of the system. In case multipledoors 1B are present, the video information may be stored with anidentification tag for each door 1B. Further, the data may be stored inassociation with a time when the video data was recorded.

The control unit 1E may be arranged to retrieve the recorded data of thevehicle door operation (e.g. the recorded video feed) from the datastorage unit 1D and to determine a normal or anomalous operation of thedoor 1B. The control unit 1E may include a computing system 1H and maycoordinate the flow of data between the computing system 1H and othercomponents. For example, the control unit 1E may assign anidentification tag to a video feed associated with the vehicle doorstored on the data storage unit 1D and send instructions to thecomputing system 1H to access the aforementioned video feed data forprocessing. The computing system 1H may further include an imageprocessing and/or machine vision algorithm module 1I and a data analysisand computation module 1J. The video feed data may undergo an imageprocessing step where the position of at least one reference point onthe vehicle door 1B is identified by using a Canny edge detectionalgorithm or other feature-based tracking algorithms such as Harris orShi-Tomasi corner detection or MIL tracker algorithm. The results of themachine vision processing then may be fed into the data analysis andcomputation module 1J. The module 1J may be arranged to compute aparameter of movement of the door 1B during the time period when thedoor 1B is opened and/or closed. This parameter may be a position,velocity, or acceleration function of the movement of the door 1B basedon the known positions of the reference points of the door 1B during thetime period for which the image analysis has been performed.

A person of ordinary skill in the art would understand that even thoughthe control unit 1E, the computing system 1H, the computation module 1J,and the data storage 1D are illustrated herein as being arrangedon-board the vehicle, all or part of these units/functions may bearranged at another location such as in a central controller or may bedistributed among multiple locations. Further, thesemodules/systems/functions may be implemented in hardware (e.g. indedicated units) or be arranged fully or partially in software. It isalso possible to provide these modules/systems/functions as stand-aloneunits or integrated units connected with other data processing systemson-board the vehicle such as surveillance systems and/or communicationsystems.

The system may also include a communication unit 1F, or a communicationsystem including such a communication unit. The communication unit 1Fmay include at least one router module 1K (or a mobile router) for datareception and transmission between an internal Local Area Network (LAN)1G provided on-board the vehicle for connection to one or more clientdevices, and one or more Wide Area Networks (WANs) 1M. The communicationunit 1F may also be arranged to communicate with various units insidethe vehicle (for example, the data storage unit 1D, the control unit 1E,et cetera, via the LAN 1G). The LAN 1G may be a wireless network usingone or several internal antennas to communicate with different unitson-board. The LAN 1G may also be set up as a wired network. Thecommunication unit may be arranged to use one or more antenna units 1Lto communicate with external WANs 1M.

FIGS. 2A and B disclose configurations of determining an error in theoperation of the vehicle door according to some embodiments of thedisclosure.

In FIG. 2A, a schematic illustration of a side view of a door of avehicle in a vehicle cabin 2AA is provided. Door blades 2AB may beprovided with predetermined artefacts or recognizable features 2AC and2AD (for example, physical parts on the body of the door blades 2ABproviding recognizable geometrical features, or markings or the likeadded to the door blades). The movement of the edges 2AC of door blades2AB, a part of the door handle 2AD, or any other recognizable featuremay serve as a reference point and may be tracked by at least onesurveillance camera 2AE inside the vehicle cabin arranged at a knowndistance 2AF from the door blades 2AB. In one embodiment, the doorblades 2AB may be provided with external markings 2AG on at least onepart of the surface of the door blades 2AB or on the surface of vehiclewindows 2AH. The camera 2AE may be arranged to record the movement ofthe door edges 2AC (or other recognizable features) during the openingand/or closing of the door blades 2AB. Here, the control unit 1E maydetermine, initiate, or control the camera 2AE to start recording themovement of the door when the door blades 2AB start to move away fromeach other when the doors are opened, and to continue the recording forthe full duration of opening and closing of the doors. Recording mayalso be initiated by a trigger such as a signal for opening the doors.Also, the recording may be continuous or discontinuous.

As shown in FIG. 2B, after the image processing module 1I has identifiedthe positions of the features 2AC, 2AD, 2AG in the recorded video, aone-dimensional or two-dimensional position function may be created bythe control unit 1E for each feature. The recorded result of tracking(e.g. an exemplary feature 2BA of the door blade) may be inserted into acurve-fitting algorithm by the data analysis module 1J of the controlunit 1E. The identified curve 2BB may then be compared to an averagedcurve 2BC associated with non-anomalous movement of the door, includinga margin for variances. In an embodiment, if the curve 2BB is determinedto fall outside an allowed window of variance 2BD with the upper 2BE andlower 2BF boundaries around the averaged curve of allowed values 2BC, anerror in the operation of the doors may be determined by the system.

FIG. 3 is a schematic illustration of an external data center and aremote central controller according to an embodiment of the disclosure.Here, an external data center may serve as a remote control unit. Thecontrol unit 3A may be arranged at the remote data center 3B. However,the remote control unit may also serve other purposes such as receivingdata from the controller of the vehicle, determining present status ofthe door operation within the vehicle, determining appropriate time ofservicing, et cetera. According to an embodiment, the control unit 3Amay be connected to a data storage unit 3C arranged to store the videofeeds received form the vehicle. The control unit may include acomputing system 3H, an image processing and/or machine vision algorithmmodule 3I, a data analysis and computation module, et cetera, similar toconfiguration in FIG. 1. The control unit 3A may be further connected tothe communication unit 3D and to the central vehicle management system3E. The communication unit 3D may be arranged to send/receive datato/from the vehicle and may be connected to at least one WAN 3F. Theremote data center may be further provided with at least one antennaunit 3G for wireless communication. The communication unit may furtherinclude a mobile router 3H for long range wireless communication withthe vehicles.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating an error determination processaccording to an embodiment of the disclosure. As shown in FIG. 4, theprocess may include steps S501-S507. In step S501, a door referencepoint may be determined. In step S502, a movement of the door (or thereference point) may be recorded during an opening or a closing. In stepS503, the video may be analyzed to identify the reference point. In stepS504, the position of the determined reference point during the movementmay be tracked and analyzed. In step S505, a parameter over time may bedetermined based on the analysis. In step S506, the parameter then maybe compared with allowable values (or a range of allowable values). Instep S507 the process may determine whether the door operateserroneously or not based on the comparison in step S506.

The invention has now been described with reference to specificembodiments. It should be noted that the above-mentioned embodimentsillustrate rather than limit the invention, and that those skilled inthe art will be able to design many alternative embodiments withoutdeparting from the scope of the appended claims. In the claims, anyreference signs placed between parentheses shall not be construed aslimiting to the claim. The word “including” does not exclude thepresence of other elements or steps than those listed in the claim. Theword “a” or “an” preceding an element does not exclude the presence of aplurality of such elements

Various embodiments of the disclosure may have one or more of thefollowing effects.

In some embodiments, the disclosure may provide systems and methods formonitoring the operation of a door of a public transportation vehicle.The disclosed methods and systems may alleviate all or at least some ofthe drawbacks of presently known systems.

In other embodiments, the disclosure may provide a system for monitoringan operation of a door of a public transportation vehicle. The systemmay include at least one video camera arranged at a distance from thedoor and a controller arranged to receive video data from the videocamera. The at least one video camera may be configured to record amovement of the door during opening and/or closing of the door. Thecontroller may be configured to determine a position of at least onereference point of the door in the video data; determine a parameter, asa function over time, of the movement of the door during opening and/orclosing from the video data, and based on the determined position of theat least one reference point; and determine from the determinedparameter whether the movement of the door is normal or anomalous.

A public transportation vehicle is a vehicle which may be included in afleet of vehicles and used for public transportation. The publictransportation vehicle may be a vehicle to carry passengers and/or cargosuch a bus, a mini-bus, a transportation van, a train of a railwaysystem, a train of a subway system, a tram, a rapid transit train, anautonomous or semi-autonomous vehicle, et cetera.

A parameter of movement of the door means a characteristic by which anymechanical movement of the door of a vehicle may be identified. Suchcharacteristic may be a real time position of the door as a functionover time. For example, a series of data of the positions at differenttime positions during a continuous movement of the door. However, theparameter may additionally or alternatively be a velocity of themovement of the door as a function over time, the acceleration withwhich the door moves during opening and closing as a function over time,et cetera.

With the disclosed systems and methods, monitoring of the operation ofthe doors in a public transportation vehicle may be implemented in avery reliable way. The disclosure may be based on the notion that bystudying the position of a door movement over time, it is possible toidentify emerging errors at a very early stage. Further, the monitoringmay be implemented in an automated way, and may be implementedcontinuously, discontinuously, or periodically every time the door ismoved.

Here, the status of the operation of vehicle doors may be monitored sothat anomalies may be detected before the errors become too serious. Oneadvantage of such continuous monitoring may be that by timelyidentifying any malfunctioning in the system of operation of the doors,the maintenance and repair procedure may be accordingly planned. Forexample, this may allow door errors to be repaired during regularservicing of the vehicle. This in turn may enable the public transportsystem to significantly reduce unwanted delays due to faulty doors,increase passenger satisfaction, reduce maintenance costs, andcontribute to increasing productivity.

Further, the system may be very cost-efficient. Video cameras arenowadays relatively low in cost; and as a result, providing dedicatedvideo cameras to monitor each door does not require any greatinvestment. In fact, since video cameras are already present on mostpublic transportation vehicles, and in many cases already positioned ina way that allows the doors to the monitored as disclosed herein, aneven more cost-effective solution is to use such surveillance camerasalso for monitoring the operation of the doors.

Thus, according to an embodiment, the video camera may be a surveillancecamera connected to a surveillance system of the public transportationvehicle. In particular, the video camera may be a closed-circuittelevision, CCTV, camera that is part of a surveillance camera system ofthe public transportation vehicle. The surveillance camera system may beinstalled in multiple locations of a cabin or carriage of the publictransportation vehicle, and the surveillance camera system may beinstalled inside or outside the cabin or carriage of the vehicle.

The cameras may be distributed in the inner space of the vehicle suchthat they may have the same or different distances and the same ordifferent viewing angles toward the doors. The cameras may view theinner frame of the door, a space between the door and the body of thevehicle, as well as full horizontal and vertical front view of the doorblades. The system may include a plurality of cameras aligned to coverat least one door blade. Such a multitude of cameras may make it easierto exactly determine the three-dimensional movement of the door.

The video feed of each door or each door blade, both from the inside andthe outside, may be assigned a unique identification tag in the form ofa digital identification file ID. The file may be a session fileincluding the recorded video feed and operation information of thevehicle door including date, time, location of the door, et cetera. Asit should be appreciated, each door may be arranged to be uniquelyidentified in the monitoring system with the information packageassociated with the door stored in a session file with theidentification tag of the door. The session file of each identified doormay keep its original ID during all steps of monitoring process or maybe assigned an updated ID after each step. In all cases the operationdata may be uniquely associated with the same door. The session files ofthe doors may be stored in a local or remote database or a local orremote data storage unit and easily retrieved upon request.

The sensitivity and resolution of the cameras may be selected such thatthe recorded video is suitable for further data processing such as imageprocessing or to be used as an input for machine vision algorithms.

According to an embodiment, one or more surveillance cameras may beinstalled outside the public transportation vehicle. The cameras may bepointed at the same or different angels of the outer parts of thevehicle doors. The cameras may have the same or different distances fromthe doors. The video feed from the outside cameras may be used formonitoring the operation of the vehicle door on its own or may be usedin combination with the video feed from the surveillance cameras insidethe vehicle and monitoring the inner parts of the same door.

Optionally, in addition to the vehicle surveillance system, othertracking sensor equipment may also be installed on board of the vehicle.For example, additional optical sensors such as infrared trackingsensors may be used. The infrared tracking sensors may be configured totrack the movement of the vehicle doors using the infra-red wavelengths.The vehicle surveillance system may further be equipped with laserdistance sensors and range finder systems based on the requirements ofthe monitoring system.

The vehicle doors may be operated in various fashions as known in theart. For example, the doors may be operated pneumatically, electrically,hydraulically, mechanically, et cetera.

In some embodiments, the movement of the doors may be monitored based onthe movement of at least one reference point on or at the doors. Themovement of the reference points may be used as a proxy for movement ofthe doors. The optical sensors may track the movement of the door duringopening and/or closing and record the position of the reference point onthe door. The reference point of the door may be at least one of a markand a recognizable geometrical feature. The reference point may bedetermined with a Canny edge detection algorithm. The recognizablegeometrical feature may be a specific edge, corner, or the like locatedon the door blade, a window, or other discernible part of the door. Incase a specific mark is used, the mark may be painted or adhered to thedoor at a desired position. The marking(s) may be reflective stickers,colored markings, industrial marking tapes, et cetera, which may beeasily identified and tracked by the surveillance camera system of thevehicle. It is also feasible to use a door handle of the door or anyother physical part of the door suitable for being optically identifiedand tracked.

The step of determining whether the movement is normal or anomalous mayinclude a step of determining whether the determined parameters fallwithin a predetermined allowed range of values for the parameters.“Falling within a predetermined/allowed range of values” means that aparameter for a door, when the door is operated in normal and fullyfunctional state, has a range of values which represent a correctoperation of the door in that movement. Such normal values, and someadditional range around these values, due to variance, et cetera, may beconsidered to be the predetermined/allowed range. When a measurement ofthat parameter during movement of the door returns a value fallingoutside the allowed range of values associated with correct operation ofthe door, a difference or deviation from normal state occurs. Bydetermining such deviation through comparison of measured and predefinednominal/allowed values, an error in the movement of the door may bedetermined. As a result, a continuous monitoring of the door operationduring opening and/or closing may be achieved and the efficiency oferror identification at early stages may be significantly improved.Further, such configuration may allow minor deviations falling outsidethe predetermined/allowed range to be detected as minor errors, whereasgreater deviations may be determined to be more serious errors. Further,the determination may also include comparing the deviations withpreviously recorded data for the same door to see whether there is atrend towards greater deviations or not. If so, this may be used topredict when the error will develop into a serious matter.

The parameter may be a position function of the reference point as afunction over time. Thus, the parameter defines the movement of thereference point along a determined path. Optionally, the parameter maybe a velocity of the reference point as a function over time, or anacceleration of the reference point as a function over time.

The determination of whether the movement is normal or anomalous mayinclude determining whether the determined parameter deviates frompreviously recorded and/or stored data for the same parameter andrelated to the same door.

The determination of whether the movement is normal or anomalous mayoptionally include determining whether the parameter, as a function overtime, deviates from normal operation of such doors, based on artificialintelligence with access to a database of recordings of the sameparameter, as a function over time, for a plurality of previouslyrecorded doors. To this end, the artificial intelligence may have accessto a plethora of recorded door movements, both working normally andworking with an anomaly. Based on this data, the artificial intelligencemay be trained to discern anomalies in a fresh recording of a doormovement.

The controller may be at least partially arranged in a control uniton-board the public transportation vehicle. However, the controller mayalso be at least partially arranged in a central control unit which maybe arranged externally from the public transportation vehicle. Thevehicle may further include a communication unit configured towirelessly communicate with the central control unit. The controller mayalso be a distributed controller arranged in parts at differentlocations, such as partially in the vehicle and partially in the centralcontrol unit.

In case an on-board control unit is used, the system may make use ofalready available on-board computing capacity of the publictransportation vehicle, such as a communication router, a surveillancecontroller, et cetera. The advantage of using the existing computersystems which have access to the camera feed may be lowering theinstallation costs significantly. However, the system may also beimplemented as a stand-alone system for existing or older models of thevehicle not having the surveillance camera system and/or thecommunication system by default.

The control unit may include a computing system having an imageprocessing module and a data analysis module. The computing system maybe arranged to run image processing and machine vision algorithms. Thecomputer vision system may be configured to process and synthesize dataand information from the video camera to detect, identify, track, andanalyze the position of the reference points of the vehicle doors.Further, the computer vision system may predict the presence, location,classification, and/or trajectories of the reference points, objects,and features in the environment inside or outside the vehicle. Thecomputing system of the control unit may preferably compute thetranslational motion of the doors of the vehicle based on the trackingdata of the reference points on the vehicle doors generated from machinevision algorithms in one, two, or three dimensions. The control unit maybe arranged to assign a unique identification tag to each recorded videofeed and door operation information stored in the data storage unit. Thecontrol unit may further be configured to store the data in a datastorage unit, associated with suitable ID tags, to allow use of the datafor trend analyses.

In some embodiments, the control unit may be arranged to use a pluralityof data points associated with the position of one or more referencepoints on the vehicle door to arrive at a parameter of the doormovement. Such parameter may be a real-time position function of thereference point, a position function of a plurality of recorded positiondata of the at least one reference point, a velocity function of asingle or plurality of recorded position data of the at least onereference point, or an acceleration function of a single or plurality ofthe recorded position data of the at least one reference point.

The control unit may be configured to determine a time window duringwhich a door movement is expected. This may be used to trigger recordingof video data during this window. It may also be used to determine thatthe movement of the door is anomalous if the door movement is notinitiated during this time window. As a result, if the processing of theposition of any individual door blade does not recognize a normalmovement within this time window, a signal may be generated by thecontrol unit and an alarm may be triggered.

It is also possible to assign different time windows for differentfunctions. For example, a first time window for determining that thedoor movement was not initiated in due time, and a second time window,optionally longer than the first one, during which recording of videodata should be made.

Accordingly, the control unit may be configured to determine theparameter of the movement of the door over a predetermined time period.

The predetermined time period (or time window) may be activated when adoor opening signal from a door control system of the publictransportation vehicle is detected by the control unit. Thus, thesynchronization trigger may be taken from the electrical signal withinthe vehicle's door control circuitry which commands the opening ofdoors, and may then also be supplied to the processing units of theinventive system. The time window may begin at the instance of the dooropening signal and extend for at least the time duration of anon-anomalous door movement (optionally for a longer time) to enablerecording of door movements which are slower than normal, due to ananomaly.

The predetermined time period, or time window, may also be activatedwhen a luminescence signal from one or more illuminators of the door ofthe public transportation vehicle is detected by the video camera or byan additional optical sensor. In such embodiment, advantage may be takenfrom the fact that lights are often present near the doors and lit asthe doors are about to open. Such lights may be colored warning orattention signal lights or lights for illumination of the area aroundthe doors. In this embodiment, additional processing of the video feedrelated to the door may be performed and the luminance of such lightsmay be determined. When the lights turn on, a synchronization triggermay be generated to start the time window. The time window may be closedafter either a fixed amount of time or after the lights are detected tohave been turned off.

The predetermined time period may also be set by an operator at anyfixed value based on the requirements of the system. For example, thepredetermined time period may be arranged to be equal to a time periodof opening and/or closing of a fully functional door of the publictransportation vehicle. The predetermined time period may be arranged tobe equal to an actual duration of opening and/or closing the door underevaluation. The data acquisition by the video camera may have anyrepetition intervals set in the monitoring system. The repetitioninterval may be every event of opening and/or closing the doors, onceevery hour, once per day, et cetera. However, the video data may also berecorded continuously, discontinuously, or periodically. And the videodata may be continuously, discontinuously, or periodically analyzed todetect any occurrence of a door movement.

Any parameters of the movement of the doors of the public transportationvehicle (e.g. the position function, the velocity function, theacceleration function, et cetera) may be arranged to be recorded andcomputed over this predetermined time window or any other time periodrequired to implement different designs of the door monitoring system.For instance, the predetermined time period may be a fraction of thetime needed for the full opening and/or closing of the fully functionaldoor, or it may be exceeding this time, such as double, triple, or thelike of the time for opening and/or closing of the door under evaluationor the fully operative door.

The controller may be configured to generate an alarm signal upondetermination that the movement of the door is anomalous. The generatedalarm signal may be a sound signal, an optical signal (e.g., flashingdanger lights), an alert notification in the vehicle operation display(e.g. a pop-up alert), or an instance recorded in a log data of thevehicle. The alarm signal may also be a message sent to a predeterminedrecipient. The alarm signal may be registered in a vehicle diagnosticslog data and be used at the time of maintenance service of the vehicle.The alarm signal may also be communicated to the driver of the publictransportation vehicle to take proper measures to ensure the integrityof door functionality or take actions to halt the operation of thevehicle in case the faulty door imposes any hurdles for furtheroperation of the vehicle. The alarm signal may also be communicated tothe passengers on board to keep a safe distance from the faulty door oras a signal to prepare the passengers to evacuate the vehicle.

The controller may further be arranged to determine the severity of thedoor movement anomaly based on how much the determined parameterdeviates from a normal state, and issue different alarm signals todifferent recipients based on the severity.

The alarm signal may also be sent directly to a remote data center or acentral vehicle management system which may in turn take actions bytaking the vehicle out of its routine operation schedule or activating arepair protocol for the faulty door or the like.

In other embodiments, the disclosed system may include a communicationunit or a communication system having such a communication unit. Thecommunication unit may be a mobile router and may be configured towirelessly communicate with the remote data center.

The communication unit may connect to a Wide Area Network (WAN) inaccordance with Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) standards (e.g. IEEE802.11 standards), Local Area Network (LAN), dedicated short rangecommunication (DSRC) channels, or any other short or long-haulcommunication network for receiving and transmitting information. Thecommunication unit may be configured to be a part of the control unit ora stand-alone unit connected to the control unit. The communication unitmay be arranged for receiving and transmitting information on board ofthe vehicle or to one or more remote data centers or the central vehiclemanagement system. Further, the communication unit may be arranged tocommunicate via any telecommunication technology, such as via 3G, 4G,5G, et cetera.

The control unit may be arranged on board of the public transportationvehicle, arranged at the remote data center, or distributed among theseunits. The control unit may be integrated within the communication unitor any available on-board computer network to connect to the videocameras (e.g. surveillance cameras), the data storage unit, et cetera.

The remote data center may be a part of the central vehicle managementsystem. The remote data center may be arranged to have wirelesscommunication functions and necessary equipment such as antennastructures, routers, mobile sender/receiver equipment, et cetera. Theremote data center may use WLAN standards or cellular data communicationnetwork to communicate with public transportation vehicles viaestablishing data links. The public transportation vehicle may also beequipped with wireless communication equipment such as antennastructures and routers to establish communication data links with theremote data center and remote control unit.

In an embodiment, the control unit may be configured to generate adiagnostic data report of the movement of the door of the publictransportation vehicle based on the determined parameter of the movementof the door. The diagnostic data report may be stored in the local datastorage unit or sent to the remote data center and stored in a remotedata storage unit.

In another embodiment, the control unit may be configured to generate arequest-to-service signal based on the diagnostic data report of themovement of the door of the vehicle. Based on the level of seriousnessand urgency of the determined error in the operation of the door, thecontrol unit may arrange a request to schedule a repair service for thefaulty door. The service may be scheduled as a supplementary maintenanceservice or simply may be added to the regular service scheme of thevehicle.

In a further embodiment, the computing system may include a Canny edgedetector. The information obtained by the Canny edge detector from thevideo feed of the cameras may be used as input to a Hough transform withthe output of the Hough transform. The information may include angleswithin a small range around the possible angles of the vertical edges ofthe door blades as perceived by the video cameras throughout the rangeof movement of the door. The Hough transform may identify straight edgefeatures parallel to the edge of the door blade in the video stream andlocalize them within the video frame.

In an embodiment, a feature-based tracking algorithm such as Harris orShi-Tomasi corner detection or the multiple instance learning (MIL)tracker algorithm may be used to track visual features on the doorblades as proxies for the movement of the door.

In another embodiment, one-dimensional position or two-dimensionalpositions of tracked visual features on the doors may be presented as afunction over time to a curve-fitting algorithm. The result of thealgorithm may be compared with a nominal door movement curve. If thefitted curve matches the nominal curve within an allowed window ofvariance, a non-anomalous door movement event may be recorded.

In a further embodiment, the one-dimensional, two-dimensional, orthree-dimensional positions of tracked visual features maybe presentedas a function over time to an artificial neural network trained on a setof non-anomalous door movements. If the network recognizes the functionshape, a non-anomalous door movement event may be recorded.

In some embodiments, the disclosure provides a method for monitoring anoperation of a door of a public transportation vehicle. The method mayinclude the following steps: recording video data of a movement of thedoor during opening and/or closing of the door; determining a positionof at least one reference point of the door in the video data;determining a parameter, as a function over time, of the movement of thedoor during opening and/or closing from the video data, and based on thedetermined position of the at least one reference point; determiningfrom the determined parameter whether the movement of the door is normalor anomalous.

Many different arrangements of the various components depicted, as wellas components not shown, are possible without departing from the spiritand scope of the present disclosure. Embodiments of the presentdisclosure have been described with the intent to be illustrative ratherthan restrictive. Alternative embodiments will become apparent to thoseskilled in the art that do not depart from its scope. A skilled artisanmay develop alternative means of implementing the aforementionedimprovements without departing from the scope of the present disclosure.

It will be understood that certain features and subcombinations are ofutility and may be employed without reference to other features andsubcombinations and are contemplated within the scope of the claims.Unless indicated otherwise, not all steps listed in the various figuresneed be carried out in the specific order described.

The disclosure claimed is:
 1. A system for monitoring an operation of a door of a public transportation vehicle, comprising: a video camera arranged at a distance from the door, the video camera being configured to record a movement of the door during at least one variation selected from the group consisting of opening and closing; and a controller arranged to receive video data from the video camera, the controller being configured to: determine a position of a reference point of the door in the video data; determine a parameter of the movement of the door as a function over time from the video data based on the position of the reference point; and determine whether the movement of the door is normal or anomalous based on the parameter.
 2. The system of claim 1, wherein the video camera is a surveillance camera connected to a surveillance system of the public transportation vehicle.
 3. The system of claim 1, wherein the video camera is a closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera.
 4. The system of claim 1, wherein the reference point of the door is selected from the group consisting of a mark and a recognizable geometrical feature.
 5. The system of claim 1, wherein the reference point is determined by a Canny edge detection algorithm.
 6. The system of claim 1, wherein determining whether the movement of the door is normal or anomalous comprises a step of determining whether the parameter falls within a predetermined allowed range of parameter values.
 7. The system of claim 1, wherein the parameter is a position function of the reference point as a function over time.
 8. The system of claim 1, wherein the parameter is a velocity function of the reference point as a function over time.
 9. The system of claim 1, wherein the parameter is an acceleration function of the reference point as a function over time.
 10. The system of claim 1, wherein determining whether the movement of the door is normal or anomalous comprises a step of determining whether the parameter deviates from previously recorded and stored data of the same parameter and related to the same door.
 11. The system of claim 1, wherein determining whether the movement of the door is normal or anomalous comprises a step of determining whether the parameter as a function over time deviates from normal operations of similar doors based on an artificial intelligence algorithm with access to a database of recordings of the same parameter as a function over time for a plurality of previously recorded doors.
 12. The system of claim 1, wherein the controller is configured to generate an alarm signal upon determining that the movement of the door is anomalous.
 13. The system claim 1, wherein the controller is partially or fully arranged in a control unit of the public transportation vehicle.
 14. The system of claim 13, wherein: the control unit is configured to determine a time window during which a door movement is expected; and the control unit is further configured to determine that the movement of the door is anomalous if it is not initiated during the time window.
 15. The system of claim 1, wherein: the public transportation vehicle further comprises a central control unit and a communication unit; the controller is partially or fully arranged in the central control unit; the central control unit is arranged externally from the public transportation vehicle; and the communication unit is configured to wirelessly communicate with the central control unit.
 16. A method for monitoring an operation of a door of a public transportation vehicle, comprising the steps of: recording video data of a movement of the door during at least one variation selected from the group consisting of opening and closing; determining a position of a reference point of the door in the video data; determining a parameter of the movement of the door as a function over time during the movement from the video data based on the position of the reference point; and determining whether the movement of the door is normal or anomalous based on the parameter. 